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Stephan De Spiegeleire

I spent about 20 years studying this country and this part of the world. Now I come back occasionally. I work in the Netherlands studying security threats to the European Union and to the Netherlands specifically, as well as the capabilities to deal with those security issues. When I come here, it shows me the good part of Ukraine and the bad part of Ukraine. All panic around the flu epidemic and the irresponsible behaviour of a lot of politicians showed me the worst of Ukraine. The fact that you managed to set up this conference shows that perseverance in difficult times is great. 

In my presentation, I am going to look at broader issues, and at how they affect this particular region. First, I’d like to make two general comments on the discussion that we have had so far. We deal with a security crisis; hence there is a professional bias to always look at the bad part of the story. However, we have to recognize that all the gloom and doom that we heard this morning must be put in a certain perspective.

We have had spectacular improvement in international security over the past 20-30 years. All data show that. There are several important ingredients in that. World economic growth had an important impact on security. Secondly, democratization (whatever you may think about democracy and whatever the future debate on democracy will be) allowed for better mediation and resolution of conflicts in countries through democratic means rather than through other means. This is an empirical observation. The rise in democratization had an enormous effect on international security. Thirdly, we were actively involved in international security operations, and the West in particular. UN peacekeeping operations have greatly improved. None of these trends have been broken by the economic crisis.  We are starting to come out of that crisis and, of course, we have to deal with the consequences. However, there is no sign that the model that was questioned for a while will continue to be questioned. We see a lot of signs of resilience there. We have cultivated a lot of resilience in the world in the past 20 years and it will not suddenly evaporate because of the economic crisis. However, some consequences should not be forgotten.

We just lived through a sort of a storm of enormous proportions.  Like in a natural storm, you look for shelter. In Western Europe and many other countries, we have huge rescue packages to shelter ourselves from this incredible storm. We are still going to pay for these rescue packages for a long time to come. That was the first reaction. In storms, most casualties do not arise during the storm but after it: buildings come down; there are medical implications, etc. The longer term trends will emerge gradually over time.

I am going to address a few points raised in this session. The first point is about new priorities. One particular thing that comes up is the global power shift. A lot of trends that we have noticed before the crisis might get accelerated because of it. 

The key trend seems to be the decline of the West and the rise of the Rest. Globally speaking, there is the decline of the West and rise of the rest. Regionally speaking, in this part of the world part there is, what I call, a differential fragilazation. The crisis has affected all countries in this part of the world, but some countries think they came out of the crisis better than others. Russians think for some reason that they came out of the crisis better. It has certainly emboldened some part of the Russian establishment. 

New priorities are dual. First, the fiscal implications of this crisis will be enormous. The EU and individual member-states have been actively pursuing an outward agenda. It is inevitable that the crisis will affect some of these priorities because there are domestic needs related to unemployment and other fiscal implications.

Second, there are a lot of unpredictable events, the so called black swans. In the past, we have been hit with a couple of these events: 9/11, the rise of cyper-terrorism, unanticipated conflicts and pandemics. The unpredictability of the security environment is one of the things that we should be most worried about.

Third, there is domestic instability. The question is to what extent international organizations can deal with it.  I think we have to differentiate the European Union, which does not have the tools to address domestic instability in Europe. The EU can deal with these things inside the Union. Other organizations have limited means at their disposal because they are monotopical and can deal with either security issues or economic issues. On the other hand, there is a need to address wider issues.

The issue of paradigm shift was mentioned today. National governments are coming again to the fore and to act in a way that we have not seen before. A number of new international organizations are emerging like G-20, reconfiguring our institutional network to better suit the problems that we are dealing with. Traditional organizations have a hard time catching up with that. This paradigm shift is important because it undermines institutional fetishism that we have been suffering from for a long time.  A lot of people, especially in this part of the world, think that security is linked to institutions, and that the belonging to an institution solves security problems. What you forget is that the European Union and all the institutions in Western Europe were growing over decades. Now you may think that you want to belong to these institutions. However, there is a lot of homework to do first, like after the incredible disaster of the World Wars, countries had to reconstruct themselves. We cannot reverse this causality; there is a certain logic that cannot be taken away.  

The crisis brings these priorities back to the forefront. Fragilization of international institutions means re-responsibilisation of national elites. That’s where the money is, that’s where the democratic legitimacy is, and that’s where the policy instruments are. That is the nation state, and even in Western Europe, we should not forget that. 

Finally, there is an issue of economic security. I don’t think this is a new issue. The crisis has clearly revealed the stovepipes that we have. Security, economics and politics are seen as separate things. Everything is organized along those lines. International institutions are like that, with the exception of the European Union. Some institutions look at security, others look at economics and finances. Incidentally, economic and financial institutions are much stronger than security organizations. Economic and financial analysts have a huge variety of data. If I look at security, there is nothing like that. You have all sorts of data telling you how countries are doing on education policy or health policy, but there is no equivalent in the security field.  International institutions have their own stovepipes, and they cannot bring all these things together. At the national level, governments have exactly the same thing: there are separate ministries of interior, of defence, of development aid, etc. These guys are fighting all sorts of political battles with each other and they find it very hard to have a comprehensive approach even at the national level, let alone at the international level. Breaking these stovepipes is one of the imperatives of today. The security crowd deals with traditional elements of security. We had a very hard time trying to build economic security into their thinking.  How many economists read security literature? How many security people read economic literature? I think that the crisis makes us recognize the stovepipes that we have to overcome and accept that security is multifaceted.

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