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The United States is installing new military leadership in Europe at a moment of heightened worries about Russian aggression, doubts about the future of arms control and rising tensions among NATO allies.

These pressures are reflected in stepped-up U.S. military maneuvers in Europe, including the unusual simultaneous deployment last week of two U.S. aircraft carrier strike groups in the Mediterranean Sea. At the same time, the Russians are rattling nerves with talk of fielding new “doomsday” weapons such as a nuclear-armed undersea drone and making moves seen by some as risking escalation of the war in eastern Ukraine.

In ceremonies in Germany on Thursday and in Belgium on Friday, Air Force Gen. Tod Wolters will take over for Army Gen. Curtis Scaparrotti in the dual roles of NATO’s Supreme Allied Commander Europe and head of U.S. European Command.

Acting Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan had planned to attend the ceremonies but canceled just hours before his scheduled departure from Washington on Wednesday.

A Shanahan spokesman said he decided he should remain in Washington for consultations with the White House and the State Department on the crisis in Venezuela and the situation on the U.S.-Mexican border.

Scaparrotti, who is retiring, spent his tenure’s final months dealing with U.S.-Turkey tensions triggered by Turkey’s decision to buy a Russian S-400 air defense system. The U.S. and other NATO allies see the deal as incompatible with Turkey’s continued participation in the Pentagon’s F-35 stealth fighter program, and even its future in NATO. The two countries have been sharply at odds over U.S. support for Kurdish fighters in Syria.

Wolters has made clear his view that the fielding of a Russian air defense system by a NATO ally is unacceptable.

“If Turkey proceeds down a path to procure and operate the S-400, they should not get the F-35,” he said at his Senate confirmation hearing on April 2. “I would contend that we all understand that Turkey is an important ally in the region, but it’s absolutely unsustainable to support co-location of the F-35 and the S-400.”

Wolters, a fighter pilot by training, had most recently served as commander of U.S. Air Forces in Europe and head of NATO’s Allied Air Command.

The U.S. dispute with Turkey has the potential to tear the fabric of NATO unity, perhaps achieving a central aim of Russia’s strategy toward the West. A Pentagon report to Congress last fall said Turkey’s purchase of the S-400 “would have unavoidable negative consequences for U.S.-Turkey bilateral relations, as well as Turkey’s role in NATO.” Turkey is among NATO member countries in which the United States stores nuclear weapons.

Some in Europe also worry that both Washington and Moscow plan to abandon a Cold War-era treaty that had banned an entire class of nuclear weapons. The U.S. and NATO accused Russia of violating the 1987 Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces treaty; Moscow denies the charge.

In NATO’s 70th anniversary year, the alliance also faces a problem that two former ambassadors to NATO call unprecedented.

“NATO’s single greatest challenge is the absence of strong, principled American presidential leadership for the first time in its history,” Douglas Lute and Nicholas Burns wrote in a report in February for Harvard University’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs.

“President Donald Trump is regarded widely in NATO capitals as the alliance’s most urgent, and often most difficult, problem” because of his open ambivalence about the value of the alliance, they wrote. Trump has accused key members, including Germany, of being freeloaders unwilling to pay for their own defense.

In his final appearance before Congress to present his assessment of security issues facing NATO and European Command, Scaparrotti in March said Russia was his main worry.

“Russia is a long-term, strategic competitor that wants to advance its own objectives at the expense of U.S. prosperity and security and that sees the United States and the NATO alliance as the principal threat to its geopolitical ambitions,” Scaparrotti said. “In pursuit of its objectives, Moscow seeks to assert its influence over nations along its periphery, undermine NATO solidarity, and fracture the rules-based international order.”

Ukraine is at the center of these concerns.

Although Ukraine is not a NATO member, it has a close working relationship with the alliance. So Russia’s 2014 seizure of Crimea from Ukraine and its military intervention in eastern Ukraine are a source of concern in much of Europe.

Last week, Russian President Vladimir Putin heightened those concerns by signing a decree to expedite citizenship applications from some Ukrainians living in areas held by Russia-backed separatists. The European Union called Putin’s move a sign that he intends to further destabilize the country.

Philip Breedlove, who served as the top NATO commander from 2013 to 2016, said in an interview that Russia poses a multidimensional threat, and that matters only worsened as the U.S. narrowed its dialogue with Moscow in recent years.

“We’re moving away from each other, sadly,” he said. “Part of that is just because we can’t depoliticize the issue of Russia in Washington, D.C.”  As a result, he added, relations have worsened and solutions have grown more distant. “We need to move forward on a conversation with Russia to have talks that might bring some fruit.”

               
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British Defense Secretary Gavin Williamson has been fired after an investigation into leaks from a secret government meeting about Chinese telecoms firm Huawei.

Prime Minister Theresa May’s office says May has “lost confidence” in Williamson.

Downing St. says “the prime minister’s decision has been informed by his conduct surrounding an investigation into the circumstances of the unauthorized disclosure of information from a meeting of the National Security Council.”

An investigation was launched last week after newspapers reported that the security council, which meets in private, had agreed to let Huawei participate in some aspects of Britain’s new 5G wireless communications network.

The government insists no decision has been made about that.

 
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Political parties across Europe are kicking off their campaigns for possibly the most consequential EU election since 1979, when voters began casting ballots for a European parliament. 

Turnout is normally low in all 28 member states, averaging around 43%, but the continent’s new kind of populist and nationalist parties hope this year will be different. Voting is set to take place between May 23 and May 26. 

Their leaders suspect high turnouts will be to their benefit as they seek to halt European integration and turn the clock back to a time, in their mind, when nation states didn’t pool their sovereignty with their neighbors. According to a recent Europe-wide poll, two-thirds of all Europeans, and three-quarters of Germans, are planning to participate in the election.

For populists, pocketbook issues are taking second place to national identity, and their message is rooted in anti-migrant sentiments.

Europe’s establishment parties, which are based more on socio-economic class politics, could buckle in this month’s European Parliament elections under the challenge from populist parties, which base themselves on socio-cultural divides. Polls show populist support is growing.

According to British pollster Michael Ashcroft, more than half the voters in Britain don’t feel represented by the main political parties. Culture and identity issues are more salient than economic ones for them, he says.

Other pollsters in Europe say they, too, are seeing cultural issues becoming more important for voters. 

Macron vs. Salvini

Two conflicting visions of Europe are on offer with centrists led by French President Emmanuel Macron and nationalist populists championed by Italy’s far-right leader, Matteo Salvini.The populists have turned to former Donald Trump aide Steve Bannon for advice.

Macron has pitched himself as the antidote to the so-called “illiberal democracies” of central Europe and the defender of the European Union. The French leader wants to reform and revive the bloc by deepening the political and economic integration of Europe.

The 44-year-old Salvini wants not only to halt further integration, but to mount a reversal so the bloc becomes more of a looser group of nation states less hedged by Brussels and EU treaties. “We’re working for a new European dream,” Salvini said in March at a gathering of like-minded populist leaders from Germany, Finland and Denmark.

He wants populists to offer a joint electoral platform similar to his Lega party manifesto, which pledges to “underline and reaffirm common Christian roots, defend national identity, and the supremacy of [national laws] over European laws and directives.”

Populist gains expected

Populist parties, especially in Italy, Poland, Hungary and France, expect to make major gains in the May elections for the 750-seat parliament. In France, opinion polls are suggesting Marine Le Pen’s far-right Rassemblement National is running neck-and-neck with Macron’s En Marche party. 

Pollsters are predicting euroskeptic populists will capture a third of the European parliament’s 750 seats. In last Sunday’s Spanish elections, the right-wing Vox party secured parliament seats, marking the first time an avowedly far-right party has done so since Gen. Francisco Franco’s death in 1975.

The populists will fall well short of the kind of parliamentary clout that would allow Salvini and his allies to re-shape the European Union and reassert the pre-eminence of national identity, or even halt deeper integration. But it would give them the opportunity to disrupt integrationist proposals and to complicate the process of appointing a new European Commission following the elections, say analysts.

Salvini, guided by Bannon, had hoped to draw together nationalist populists into a continent-wide electoral alliance, but they are unified only when it comes to their disdain for the old establishment politics.On some other key issues, they are divided and the top leaders are deeply competitive with each other. 

Italy’s Salvini, Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orban and French politician Marine Le Pen are all eager to be seen as Europe’s populist-in-chief. But the Italian deputy prime minister has been pressing other EU member states to take “their fair share” of migrants, helping to relieve Italy, Greece and Spain of the burden. Orban and central European leaders refuse to do so.

Polish nationalists are also deeply skeptical of the warming ties between their western European counterparts and Russian President Vladimir Putin.

No ‘normal crisis’

Nonetheless, the populist challenge is shaking up European politics and this month’s election is likely to bring that home. Bulgarian political scientist Ivan Krastev, author of the book After Europe, cautions against people thinking this is a “normal crisis.” 

He argues “against those who are convinced that nothing can happen because the European Union is going to stay and the current crisis is a normal one. No, it’s a more radical crisis than any other we have ever experienced before.” He warns people shouldn’t take the European Union for granted, although he doesn’t believe it will disintegrate.

For centrists and Europhiles, though, there are grounds for confidence. The Brexit mess has softened some of the euroskepticism of the new populists, none of whom is advocating leaving the bloc. 

And the rise of nationalist populism is also prompting a Europhile reaction — a recent survey across 10 European states by the Pew Research Center found strong support for the EU with a median 74 percent saying it promotes peace, democratic values and prosperity. But more than half worry Brussels still doesn’t understand the needs of ordinary citizens.
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On posters, hustings and social media, a battle for Europe is being fought, as contenders seek votes for an EU parliamentary election in late May – but the real battle for power will come only once the count is in.

More than 400 million voters will deal the hands that leaders, of parties, nations and rival EU institutions, must play; but it will be after the May 23-26 ballot that the high-stakes poker will begin that will shape the European Union for years to come.

Then comes the real suspense: how pro-Union groups may build a majority coalition to work with the EU executive and member states to make law; how a growing eurosceptic bloc may disrupt it; how lawmakers will clash with national leaders over who runs Brussels; and whether British members might end up staying.

“The campaign determines the strength of people’s bargaining positions,” a senior official in the European Parliament said. “But the real game will start after the count.”

The sheer scale of elections for the 751 lawmakers who will convene in the European Parliament in Strasbourg on July 2 limits scope for surprises of the kind voters have delivered in national ballots as they lose confidence in established elites.

Second only to India as an exercise in democracy but beset by low turnouts that hamstring the legislature’s ambitions to legitimacy, proportional representation, a plethora of parties and a tendency for 28 national campaigns to even out shocks mean that poll data tend to be a fair guide to the overall outcome.

That points to policy continuity as the European Union tries to prove its use in defending common interests in global struggles over power, trade and the environment against nationalist critics.

Brexit Party Time

A survey commissioned by the parliament, whose projections were on the money in the 2014 election, shows the center-right EPP and center-left S&D losing 37 seats each and hence the majority they enjoy in an informal “grand coalition.”

That, many lawmakers expect, will mean a broader reaching out after the vote to the likes of the ALDE liberals, who are hoping for a major boost from President Emmanuel Macron’s mold-breaking French party, and also possibly to the Greens.

With Italy’s populist ruling League and, at times, France’s far-right National Rally and Britain’s new Brexit Party topping national opinion rankings, polls show a surge for eurosceptics.

But talk of a blocking minority, with allies in more mainstream groups such as the Polish and Hungarian ruling parties, comes up against the nationalists’ persistent divisions.

The uncertainties around how the parliament will line up in July are compounded this year by a number of new parties – most obviously Macron’s En Marche – keeping options open on whom to sit with, but also by Brexit, since the delay to Britain leaving the EU has led to London holding a vote for 73 British MEPs.

That potentially brief presence means some officials suggest key decisions, notably parliamentary votes on who should succeed Jean-Claude Juncker and his team at the European Commission, be put off until the British have left.

Jobs Row

Even without Brexit, this year may be tricky, as lawmakers and national leaders face off over the legislature’s demand that a lead “Spitzenkandidat” from a winning party succeed Juncker.

Leaders would normally agree on a successor in late June so that parliament can endorse the appointment in July. But a row with parliament could also delay the handover beyond Nov. 1.

Key appointments, including that of European Central Bank president after Mario Draghi leaves in October, will see fierce bargaining, among big states and small, the north, south, east and west of Europe, left and right, men and women, and so on.

The European Council of national leaders, which must also choose its own next president in succession to Donald Tusk, is reluctant to be tied to a choice of Manfred Weber, a conservative German MEP, or Juncker’s Dutch deputy, Frans Timmermans of the Socialists.

Macron is a loud opponent of parliament’s Spitzenkandidat push and Brussels is abuzz with talk that he favors others – notably Frenchman Michel Barnier, the EU’s Brexit negotiator, or centrist Danish EU antitrust commissioner Margrethe Vestager.

Weber and his parliamentary allies will argue strongly that it is that kind of backroom carve-up which is turning Europeans off the EU. In reply, national leaders may argue that they have stronger democratic mandates to govern than a parliament for which in 2014 only 43 percent of voters cast a ballot.

Polling data suggests somewhat more people intend to vote than last time, parliamentary officials say. But there are huge variations in engagement with campaigns largely fought on domestic issues. In Belgium, where voting is compulsory and a national election is held the same day, turnout was 90 percent in 2014. But in Slovakia, it was 13 percent.
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Russian President Vladimir Putin suddenly sacked Moscow’s ambassador to Belarus, Mikhail Babich, the Kremlin said on Tuesday, amid a row over contaminated oil and a wider political discord between the ex-Soviet countries.

Belarussian President Alexander Lukashenko has generally been more closely aligned with Moscow than any other ex-Soviet leader, while the lack of tolerance for dissent at home has made him largely a pariah in the West.

However, Minsk has shown increasing signs of seeking a thaw with the United States and the European Union since 2014, when Belarus did not recognize Russia’s annexation of the Crimea peninsula from neighboring Ukraine.

Lukashenko has said Russian officials had sometimes set unacceptable conditions for Belarus, such as adopting the Russian currency or even merging with Russia.

Babich had been appointed Moscow’s envoy to Belarus last August. He had criticized Belarus authorities amid the row over oil tax change which Belarus says will cost its budget $400 million this year.

The Kremlin said on Tuesday Babich will move to another job and will be replaced by Dmitry Mezentsev, a lawmaker from the upper house of parliament.

The wider political differences have been exacerbated by the contaminated Russian oil flows to European countries including Belarus.
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Georgian President Salome Zourabichvili says Russia’s decadelong military occupation of South Ossetia and Abkhazia has failed to break the national will to maintain sovereignty and achieve European Union and NATO accession.

“Despite the occupied territories and despite the … constant everyday pressure with hostage-taking, with humanitarian pressure on the populations on both sides of the occupying line, this has not been a victory for Russia, because Georgia has kept its line and (determination) to join the EU and (North Atlantic Treaty Organization),” she told VOA’s Georgian Service in an interview in Tbilisi.

“And I think that was the ultimate aim of Russia: to effect Georgia’s determination,” she said, adding that, as such, “it’s a victory for Georgia and not for Russia.”

Ever since Georgia’s 2003 Rose Revolution severed ties with its Soviet past and pivoted the southern Caucasus nation of roughly 3.7 million toward the West, it has struggled to secure EU and NATO membership.

Despite visa-free travel and formal trade pacts with the European bloc, the EU has yet to grant Georgia membership candidacy, in part because of Brussel’s trepidation about openly antagonizing Russian President Vladimir Putin following the 2014 annexation of Ukraine’s Black Sea peninsula. (In Georgia, where Russian tank units maintain control over 20% of the terrain, a holdover from the August 2008 five-day war, officials had long espoused their conviction that Russia might one day attempt to annex portions of Ukraine.)

Increased American naval activity on the Black Sea — a kind of maritime gateway for trade and access to natural resources across Asia that circumvents routes through Russia — reflects not only U.S. strategic interest in the region, Zourabichvili said, but an opportunity for Tbilisi to deepen ties with Washington.

“I think the Black Sea is becoming much more important in the strategic view of the United States,” she told VOA. With NATO-partnered Romania and Bulgaria on the maritime region’s western flank, Georgia is vital strategic partner on the eastern shore, “and we are ready to see the Black Sea being a more important link with the United States.”

Beyond established U.S.-Georgian military cooperation, former U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis in October praised Georgia’s defense reforms and contributions to the NATO Resolute Support mission in Afghanistan, where Tbilisi’s 870 uniformed troops represent the world’s largest per capita contributor to the mission. Zourabichvili said she would like to see increased cybersecurity cooperation and training with both the U.S. and NATO.

Asked whether she was open to hosting a U.S. military base on Georgian soil, however, Zourabichvili was doubtful.

“I don’t think that it would be recommended,” she said. “We don’t need to take steps that might be viewed as provocations, and I don’t think that the United States would be ready for having here a military base that would attract probably reactions both from Russia and from these … terrorist movements that are very active in the region.”

Meanwhile, Tbilisi’s lack of diplomatic ties to Moscow means that it must depend exclusively upon interlocutors to demand that Russia respect its obligations under international law in Abkhazia and South Ossetia.

“Of course we know that it won’t change the situation in the occupied territories today,” she said “But there might come a day, and I hope it will be soon, where that might have some effect. So we cannot let either Russia or our partners forget that the issue of the occupied territories is a very central issue for Georgia.”

Russia, she said, “will never have a veto” over Georgia’s transatlantic path.

Although Georgia hosts NATO military exercises and has troops serving with alliance forces in Afghanistan, NATO has set no date for membership.

Zourabichvili, 67, who was born in France, became Georgia’s first woman president in December 2018.

This story originated in VOA’s Georgian Service. 
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The father-and-son leaders of a divisive anti-immigrant party were sworn in Monday as Estonia’s interior and finance minister.

Prime Minister Juri Ratas presented his 15-member coalition Cabinet on Monday at the 101-seat Riigikogu assembly located in the picturesque Old Town of Estonia’s capital, Tallinn.

Earlier this month, Ratas, leader of the left-leaning Center Party, clinched a surprise deal with the nationalist and euroskeptic Estonian Conservative People’s Party, or EKRE, as well as with the conservative Fatherland, to create a majority coalition.

EKRE’s Mart Helme, 69, was appointed interior minister in the Cabinet, while his son Martin, 43, becomes finance minister.

EKRE’s strong rhetoric has divided Estonia ever since the party first entered parliament in 2015. The party has advocated abolishing the law recognizing same-sex civil unions, demanded changes to the country’s abortion law and fiercely opposed European Union quotas for taking in asylum-seekers.

It emerged from the election with 17.8% of votes, becoming Estonia’s third-largest party.

The three parties will have five ministerial posts each in the government. Fatherland’s Urmas Reinsalu became new foreign minister and Juri Luik from the same party continues as defense minister — a key post in this small Baltic nation that neighbors Russia.

The fact that EKRE is entering a governing coalition has caused fierce debates nationwide, with some Estonians blaming it for polarizing society.

In a curious detail, President Kersti Kaljulaid was following the new Cabinet’s inauguration ceremonies in the parliament sporting a sweater inscribed with the Estonian words “Sona on vaba,” or “Speech is free.”

That is seen as a statement on the importance of freedom of speech from the head of state following weeks of public controversy on EKRE, which has accused Estonian media of biased reporting on the party’s affairs.

In early April, Peeter Helme — nephew of Mart Helme — was appointed the new editor-in-chief of Estonia’s oldest and largest newspaper Postimees. Peeter Helme has worked with the paper earlier.

EKRE claims to defend the interests of ethnic Estonians in the former Soviet republic where some 25% of the 1.3 million inhabitants are ethnic Russians, who have traditionally opted to vote for the Center Party.

Mart Helme told an Estonian radio channel Sunday that it was “wishful thinking” that the party would tone down its strong rhetoric after assuming government power.

A total of five parties are represented in parliament, including the Reform Party that was the biggest party after the March 3 election. Its leader, Kaja Kallas, was first tasked to form a government, but she failed to get sufficient support.
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The United States is key to settling the ongoing conflict between Kosovo and Serbia, Kosovo President Hashim Thaci said on Monday, pointing to the inability of major European countries to reach a unified position on the issue.

The former Serb and predominantly ethnic Albanian republic of Kosovo declared its independence in 2008, almost a decade after a bloody war there.

It won recognition from the United States and most EU countries, but not from Serbia or its big power patron Russia, and relations between Belgrade and Kosovo remain tense.

“Without the U.S. we can never have any dialogue, negotiations or any agreement,” Thaci told Reuters TV in Berlin, adding: “The EU is not united in this process.”

Thaci was in Berlin to join a summit later on Monday on the Western Balkans, called by German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Emmanuel Macron.

Thaci played down the expectations for the Berlin meeting saying: “I will not expect any miracle.”

It is crucial for Serbia to recognize Kosovo as an independent state, Thaci said.

“We will ask today Chancellor Merkel and President Macron to convince (Serb) President (Aleksandar) Vucic to recognize Kosovo”, Thaci said, adding that if that does not happen, “I think the meeting in Berlin will not be useful.”

Thaci stressed that Serbia tended to orient itself towards Russia but Kosovo wanted to be part of NATO and the European Union as soon as possible.
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Thousands protested around the Czech Republic on Monday against a justice minister nominee they fear might meddle with a criminal case involving the prime minister.

President Milos Zeman will appoint Marie Benesova on Tuesday after the resignation of her predecessor, bringing opposition accusations of pressure on courts as Andrej Babis faces a potential fraud trial over European Union subsidies more than a decade ago.

Babis, a billionaire media and chemicals businessman before entering politics, has repeatedly denied wrongdoing and has called the investigation a plot to force him out of politics.

Czech police said on April 17 that Babis and others should stand trial for the alleged fraud involving the handling of a 2 million euro EU subsidy — charges that could see the prime minister jailed for up to 10 years.

Justice Minister Jan Knezinek resigned the day after the police wrapped up their investigation. Babis said Knezinek’s position had only been intended to be temporary. His departure came amid a wider cabinet shuffle.

On Monday, protesters marched from the Prague Castle, the seat of the Czech president, through the capital’s medieval centre to the Old Town Square. Marchers chanted “We have had enough” and organizers carried banners saying “Justice.” The website of daily Mlada Fronta Dnes reported 10,000 demonstrated in the capital.

In the country’s second largest city, Brno, around 3,000 marched, according to estimates of news website SeznamZpravy.cz. Czech Television reported protesters turned out in 105 spots in the country of 10.6 million.

Benesova had previously served in a caretaker cabinet in 2013, appointed by President Zeman – who has backed Babis. She was the top state attorney, appointed by a Zeman-led government in 1999.

She supported Babis in 2017 when she abstained in a lower house vote on lifting his parliamentary immunity.

Despite the investigation, Babis’s ANO party maintains a firm poll lead after sweeping to power in a 2017 election when it won three times the votes of its nearest competitor with pledges to end politics as usual and bring a businessman’s touch to governance.

Babis, the country’s second richest person, has long fought accusations of conflicts of interest because of his vast business interests. He put his Agrofert business empire into trusts in 2017 to meet new Czech legislation.
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