A BELGIAN PERSPECTIVE ON INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS

The title of this book has been chosen with care and a few introductory words of explanation are owed to the reader. First, the notion of a “Belgian perspective” on international affairs may on its own seem peculiar. In what way, one might ask, can little Belgium, with its population of around 12 million have a perspective that is unique and worthy of consideration? In the same vein, what perspective on foreign affairs in general can a lesser Member State of the European Union have when the most powerful Member State, Germany, denies that it has an independent foreign policy and defers to Brussels, specifically to the EU’s High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, who, formally, holds sole responsibility for these matters on behalf of the 500 million plus people from 28 nations? Indeed, in a recent interview relating to the publication of his latest book, the octogenarian former prime minister of Belgium Marc Eyskens pointed out that the rise of the EU Institutions has left national governments with a substantially reduced level of sovereignty and competence comparable to that of a major city rather than of a country. Meanwhile and in parallel, as the seat of both the NATO headquarters near the Zaventem Airport and of the Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe in Mons, Belgium marches in lock-step with its US-led allies. Belgium’s mainstream media, both television and print media, traditionally support whatever policy line comes from the EU Institutions and NATO. There have been rare exceptions to this solemn loyalty to the consensus. In particular, in the run-up to the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, Belgium was one of the three “Old Europe” nations, alongside France and Germany, that joined Russia in openly rejecting US policy. For this the nation’s Prime Minister at the time, Guy Verhofstadt, paid dearly, being disqualified from appointment to head the EU Commission, for which he was a leading candidate at the time. But the aforementioned facts constraining the political elites of Belgium are by no means imperative for Belgian society as a whole. Indeed, as I detail in several essays in this collection, at both ends of society, the high end in their dinner jackets and at the mass, man-in-the-street level, there is very little sympathy for the official foreign and defense policies and a lot of free-thinking going on. All of which brings us to the question of who is the Belgian whose perspective is set out in this tome. The simple and direct answer is that I am that Belgian. Readers of my articles posted in various platforms on the internet have seen me described in the past as an American and long-time resident of Brussels. Both statements were and are correct. However, in August 2017 I also became a naturalized Belgian. This ‘second birth’ was more than seven years in gestation. After its successful culmination, I found myself increasingly involved in intra-Belgian, intra-European politics. Consequently, I have written with greater frequency on issues that are specific to the Old Continent. By their nature, these articles have not been picked up and disseminated via the internet platforms based in the United States by which readers know me best. Moreover, in my new guise I have written some of these articles or speeches in French so as to better reach prospective readers around me where I live and practice politics. These materials are also republished in this volume. --------------------------------------------------------------- As this book goes to print, the title of the first essay in the collection dating from September 2017 (Impeach Trump!) has never been more relevant to current affairs. After nearly two years of foot dragging over impeachment procedures against the President, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has finally formulated impeachment charges against Trump. Not for collusion with the Russians in 2016, which was indeed fake news and strictly political warfare coming out of the Democrats’ non-acceptance of the verdict of the people in November 2016 that brought Trump to power. Not for the brutal rant by Trump before the UN General Assembly in December 2017 which is the subject of this essay. But for the latest stage of political warfare, in the circumstances of Trump’s conversation with the newly elected President of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky, to investigate the impropriety if not illegality of Joe Biden’s pressures on the Ukrainain leadership when he was Vice President and his son was a member of the board of Ukraine’s largest gas company. Donald Trump is by no means the only personality on the global stage for whom my appreciation has swung back and forth between positive and negative over the course of the two years of contemporary history covered in this collection of essays. Emmanuel Macron is another outstanding case. His debut in the United States, when he spoke before the joint houses of Congress, as no other French leader had been invited to do since the time of General de Gaulle, so clearly benefited from insights into the American mentality and was so skillfully directed against his host, Donald Trump, that I assumed it was partly written by the Americans, and to be more specific, by persons in the US intelligence agencies who were at war with Trump’s America First policies. The notion of Macron as an American invention has faded with time, and is fully overturned by Macron’s speeches of 2019, none more so than his speech to the French diplomatic corps on 27 August. It is fitting that my essay looking into this French roadmap for a new European foreign policy is third from last in the collection, providing as it does, a note of optimism in what is otherwise a largely bleak period under observation. One may also see optimism in the final essay dealing with Trump’s recent removal of U.S. troops from Syria in the face of Turkey’s intended military operation against Kurdish forces at the Syrian border. Several of the most important essays in this volume deal with elections. These are firstly the presidential elections of 2018 in Russia, to which I was an international observer, and the legislative (Duma) elections of 2019 which I followed from abroad but intensively nonetheless. Then there are essays on the elections to the European Parliament of May 2019, which I observed up close from my perch in Brussels. I use this moment to mention briefly several of the other significant topics covered in this volume. Among them, the technical and equipment disparities between the United States military and its NATO allies that put in question the whole alliance, the prospects of an emerging arms race, the identification of an ideological dimension which makes the U.S.-Russian confrontation look ever more like a full-blown cold war, the global significance of the Russian-Chinese strategic alignment which is becoming an alliance in all but name. These issues are weighty and they are presented as they emerged and evolved over the period under examination. As leavening, I have included other essays in diverse genres such as travel notes, book reviews, and mining Russia’s golden age literature (Tolstoy’s War and Peace) for insights into the security challenges we face today. I am hopeful that the reader will find this blend both informative and food for thought.