• Thursday, March 28, 2024
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Pence and Merkel offer contrasting visions of global security

Pence and Merkel offer contrasting visions of global security

The 2019 three-day Munich security conference ended on Sunday in a mood of discord and division between the US and its allies.

That mood was reflected most in two speeches that followed each other on Saturday. After German chancellor Angela Merkel drew acclaim for her critique on the troubled era in US-European relations, Mike Pence, US vice-president, drew a tepid reaction when he lauded President Donald Trump’s more isolationist foreign policy.

Senior officials from other powers, including China, Russia and Iran, gave trenchant addresses to the 56-year-old annual gathering of heads of state and government, military and intelligence chiefs. The arguments raged as intensely in side events and bilateral meetings behind the scenes in the warren-like Bayerischer Hof Hotel. Here are the Financial Times’s main takeaways:

Fall into line Europe — Mr Pence’s speech capped a week of sharp US rhetoric in European capitals, notably in a meeting in Warsaw that Washington used to try to win over allies to its clampdown on the Iranian regime.

The discourse went beyond telling its allies to “live with” Mr Trump’s hardline approach” to what Constanze Stelzenmüller, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington, terms, “you’d better join us, or else”. Mr Pence called on Europe to back tough US lines on Iran, Venezuela and Chinese cyber security risks. One adviser to a senior European official blasted the speech “obscene”.

The US is not just Trump — The conference offered up an alternative vision of the US. Joe Biden, former vice-president, and a large congressional delegation including Nancy Pelosi, House Speaker, offered a more comforting return to co-operation under the Democrat-led Congress or a new administration. While Mr Trump has previously branded the EU a foe, Mr Biden hailed it as “critical to security and stability”. David Miliband, a former British foreign secretary and now president of the International Rescue Committee, said many people were “hanging a lot of hope on the idea that there is an openness to the world in Congress”.

Europe needs to sort itself out — For all the tutting at the Trump administration, there was pessimism about Europe’s appetite or ability to fill the security void left by an isolationist US. Discussions on the margins laid bare the obstacles of resource and political challenges to greater security co-operation, including the lack of common EU arms export rules. Sauli Niinistö, Finnish president, lamented the lack of “hard strength” to bolster its influence in world security. Norbert Röttgen, head of the Bundestag’s influential foreign affairs committee, said Europe was just “going round in circles” and was “even more divided than a year ago”. He added: “It would like to shape the international discourse, but it won’t assume any power.”

Arms control is unravelling, or perhaps evolving — The conference was marked by anxiety about the demise of the Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces ballistic missiles control treaty, signed in 1987 by the US and the Soviet Union, and what it means for Europe. Ursula von der Leyen, German defence minister, warned there must be no return to the “tit-for-tat actions of the 1980s” when the US and the Soviet Union both deployed nuclear weapons in Europe. Ms Merkel said any attempt to revive the treaty should involve China, although she acknowledged Beijing might “have some reservations”.

The next big fear is that New Start, the last big arms control treaty between Russia and the US, might be next to fall apart. The pact, which caps the number of nuclear weapons Washington and Moscow can hold, expires in 2021. Sergei Ryabkov, Russian deputy foreign minister, said there was a risk the treaty will “just fade away” in two years’ time. “That would be another severe blow to the international system of security,” he said.

Middle Eastern flashpoints — Syria has emerged as the latest source of transatlantic tensions. The US is pressing for Europe to invest more in the anti-Isis fight and urging EU states to take back 800 foreign-born fighters. With the caliphate all but eliminated, Washington has tried to ease European concerns over Mr Trump’s plans to withdraw 2,000 troops. James Jeffrey, US envoy on Syria, insisted on Sunday that the drawdown wouldn’t be “abrupt”.

But at the same time, the US wants its allies in the war-torn country to step in and fill the gap. A meeting of the global coalition against Isis in Munich on Friday ended inconclusively with little enthusiasm from European countries to step in as American soldiers leave. “No one wants to be the tethered goat,” said one European official.

On Iran, foreign minister Mohammad Javad Zarif fired a warning shot at the US, and Europe. While he denounced Mr Pence for his “arrogant” demands that Europe fall into line with Washington by pulling out of the international Iran nuclear deal, he also chided the EU for what he said were its inadequate efforts to save the pact by safeguarding European-Iranian trade. “Europe needs to be willing to get wet if it wants to swim against the dangerous tide of US unilateralism,” Mr Zarif said.

Post-Brexit sabre-rattling — What one European official described as “the Brexit disaster” was a hot topic on the sidelines. UK officials brought with them to Bavaria an assertive insistence that their country would remain an international security player and partner after it exits the European bloc next month. Gavin Williamson, Britain’s defence secretary, launched a strongly-worded broadside at Russia, accusing the Kremlin of using security company proxies to deny “having blood on their hands”.

The speech drew derision from Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov, who jokingly referred to him as “the minister for war”. With the EU’s chief Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier also in town, the topic hung heavy in the Munich winter sunshine and chill night air.