Toespraak van minister Timmermans bij de International Governance Innovation (CIGI)

Toespraak | 16-05-2014

Ladies and gentlemen,

I am honoured to be allowed to speak to such a distinguished group of people. This morning in Ottawa, I was told by Mr Clark that when he was foreign minister, he never got such a distinguished group to listen to him. I hope I won’t disappoint you because I have read his work, and I’ve always been very impressed by his contributions, especially to international relations, and by Canada’s track record and legacy as a great contributor to the international system, including the UN, and to thinking about disarmament, humanitarian law and the future of international relations. I have always been a great admirer of Canada’s contribution to these issue that affect the very future of mankind. I’m sure that in a close partnership between our two countries we can advance that agenda, even in these trying times.

I will be talking about our trying times today. Even when we are challenged in the security field, we should still be thinking about an agenda of disarmament, nuclear disarmament, the fight against the spread of weapons of mass destruction. Paradoxically, the urgency of that agenda only increases when there are international tensions.

There are over one million people here that originally came from the Netherlands and are now part of Canadian society. The bond between our two countries has always been strong. Various Dutch municipalities are twinned with towns and cities in Canada, and cultural exchanges are very frequent. During the Second World War the Dutch royal family found a temporary home in Canada, and in the post-war years in particular many Dutch people emigrated here. In some cases as brides of Canadian soldiers who had fought against the Nazis; in others as entrepreneurs and farmers, looking to start new businesses and build a new life on Canadian soil. During the first week of May, memorial ceremonies are held throughout the Netherlands to commemorate the end of the Second World War.

On this very date in 1945, the 5th Armoured Division of the First Canadian Army liberated the industrial port of Delfzijl in the north of the Netherlands. In this special year Canada commemorates both the centennial of the outbreak of the First World War and the 75th anniversary of the start of the Second World War. All Canadians – and Dutch Canadians in particular – pause to reflect on the extraordinary sacrifices made in liberating the Netherlands and the rest of Europe. Back in the Netherlands, Canadian veterans still march in our memorial parades. Dutch gratitude to our Canadian liberators has not dimmed in the nearly 70 years since the end of the war, and the bond between our two countries is as strong as ever.

The relationship between our countries is not just a matter of historical interest. It also holds great significance for the future. The Second World War is one of the historical anchors of our relationship. Recalling that period is very important, not only because we must never forget the sacrifices made by Canadian soldiers for the freedom of the Netherlands and the rest of Western Europe, but also because the repercussions of that period still resonate today. The liberation of the Netherlands by Canadian troops marked the start of reconstruction in Western Europe. The post-war period saw the rise of the welfare state and, a little later, the emergence of post-modern societies with a large degree of individual freedom, rights and a relatively balanced distribution of wealth.

I think Canada and the Netherlands are quite similar in all these respects, arguably more so than the Netherlands and some of its European neighbours – and as far as Canada is concerned, arguably more so than Canada and the United States. It’s an interesting paradox that we are in some respects also closer than you to the United States.

The historical conflicts of the post-war period in the 20th century all had a strong ideological character. In Europe and other parts of the world there was not only a clash of geopolitical interests, but there were two different social models: communism and liberal democracy. With the totalitarian USSR on the one side and the democratic Western European welfare states on the other, the Cold War was a conflict of fundamental values. The Western alliances that arose after the Second World War defended these values. This is true not only of NATO but also of what started out as the European Coal and Steel Community and would later become the European Union. The very idea behind this undertaking was to create interdependence at a level that would preclude the possibility of conflict between states.

When the Soviet Union began to disintegrate in 1989 and finally collapsed in 1991, there was initially a spirit of triumphalism. The famous essay by Francis Fukuyama on ‘the End of History’ is often wrongly cited in this context, and it did him a great injustice. But as the piece is commonly interpreted, it was an expression of misplaced self-confidence. I don’t want to attack Mr Fukuyama because I admire him greatly, and his recent work on the origins of democratic governance is of great value to any democratic state. But I do want to say that we presumed that conflict would be a thing of the past. What we’ve seen is the re-emergence of the need to be geopolitically active. This may have been triggered by the present conflict in Ukraine, but it has been brewing for a longer time. I think if I look back on the last 20 years, especially from the perspective of the EU or even NATO, we thought that this kind of geopolitical action would not be necessary in the future.

But it is; it has come back. And for us as professionals it’s probably relatively easy to readapt and to reformulate. It can be quite an exercise, but I think we can do it. The weakness in our position is that we have neglected to prepare our populations for this new phenomenon. We urgently need to put a lot of effort into explaining to our populations what is at stake, so that they will give us the mandate to act when we need to. This challenge is pressing today for many reasons. First of all, because of the neglect I mentioned before, but also because the credibility of the Western world has diminished the support of our own populations, given the way we’ve acted in the last 15 years . I say this without wanting to blame individual Western states, and I will gladly shoulder part of the blame behalf of the Netherlands

There are two reasons for this trend. The first: we were seen as acting in non-compliance with our own values. If you talk about values (human rights, democracy, the rule of law), you have to practice what you preach. And some of the excesses we’ve seen in Iraq (e.g. Abu Ghraib), Guantanamo Bay and elsewhere have not just given adversaries ammunition to attack us for having double standards – that much I could handle – but it has also weakened the support of our own constituencies for what we need to be doing. So we need to go back to our fundamental values and stick to them, regardless of the risks we sometimes run. These values are too fundamental to creating public support for our actions to jeopardise them out of political expediency. That is the first lesson we need to learn.

The second reason – this doesn’t apply to Canada, but it does to Europe – is the surge of anti-Americanism in parts of European society, especially on the left and the extreme left of the political spectrum.

President Putin manipulates this anti-Americanism very skilfully, and it is propelled by people who say, ‘You know. Why should we believe a friend who listens in on the private conversations of chancellor Merkel? Why should we believe a country that says that Russia is not allowed to invade another country when we have seen that country acting along the same lines?’

I think it is all faulty reasoning, but it works with parts of the population, so I think we need to address that issue. But the far more complicated issue and painful issue relates to the right and the extreme right in Europe. And I’ve seen some examples of it from a politician from my own country today. The hatred of the European Union is so deeply rooted in the extreme right in Europe that they blame it for what is happening in Ukraine, saying that the fact that the EU rushed into an association agreement with Ukraine triggered the intervention by President Putin. Secondly, they seem to like that President Putin at least is a strong leader. He stands up for his nation and for the Russian people, and this is seen as attractive by the extreme right in many European nations, including the Netherlands.

And here, I believe, the Canadian example could be helpful to all of us. It is mindboggling that a huge nation like Canada, with all its diversity, with so many recent immigrants from all parts of the world and a wide variety of different cultures, can maintain this level of social tranquillity and – not tolerance, for that’s actually quite an awful word – acceptance of difference.

It’s easier if you have all that space; I accept that. But still, I think Canada has a lot to teach us on this front, because in Europe, we have begun to doubt whether our societies can handle diversity. Diversity has been attacked, especially by the extreme right and in circumstances of economic difficulties, such as what we’ve been experiencing in the last five years. What we see in Europe today is the re-emergence of an age-old phenomenon on the European continent, linked to both current trends and the ghosts of the past. If things go badly, we go and look for someone to blame. If things go badly, we never look at ourselves, we look at the other. If things go badly, it is always the Jews or the blacks or the Muslims or whoever you can identify as a separate group that has to take the blame. That’s the first step.

The second step then always becomes slowly and gradually dehumanising that group so that at some point it becomes acceptable to say that they should leave society. We in the Netherlands have reached the point that a certain politician can say: ‘We could do with less people of a certain ethnicity in Dutch society.’ I would’ve never thought it possible, but it happened. And it can happen because of the context I just elaborated on. Understanding our history and our past should teach us to be very vigilant for that sort of development in Europe. It is to our benefit to know more about Canada’s experience in this area and Canadian society in general. At present this country is treated not by the Dutch but by many others with a form of extremely benign neglect. Canada is there and Canada is great and everybody loves Canada, but how many people actually know a lot about Canada? I’m not sure, but the people should know more about Canada. Usually in politics, if you know more about a subject, you love it less. But I’m quite sure that knowing more about Canada will increase the appreciation worldwide for this country.

But let me return to the issue of Ukraine. I wanted to mention these two points of the extreme right and the extreme left in Europe, because it would be wrong to assume that some European nations’ reluctance to rush into a confrontation with Russia is only inspired by the fear of losing their economic position or trade. Don’t underestimate the proportion of the European population who actively doubt whether our opposition to President Putin is correct and see some merit in the position he has been advocating. I was in Estonia on Monday, and even there, 20 per cent of the population believe that Putin actually has a point. Twenty per cent of the population of Estonia, a nation that fears being the potential next target for Russia! But the very good news is that all Estonians, including Russian-speaking Estonians, are loyal to the Estonian state. That is a message that should be heard in Moscow.

The fact that because it had a disagreement with the government of Ukraine, Russia decided to simply steal part of that country, is a sea change in our international relations and will have long-term repercussions for the international system. That’s what I meant when I said that geopolitics are back. Are these repercussions completely predictable? Not at all, because if I look back on my almost 30 years of experience with Russia, I can only conclude that Russians, especially President Putin, are brilliant at tactics, but one wonders whether they have thought through their strategy. And in my experience, Russian strategy is often a series of tactical decisions, whereas usually tactics are inspired by a long-term strategy. Russia is not the only place where this is happening, but it is a particular challenge to us in NATO and the EU, because these are tactical steps with unpredictable long-term outcomes.

We need to prepare for a range of potential outcomes, and that is a particular challenge today. We need to resist the temptation to do what President Putin apparently does and go into a Cold War mode. That would be unwise. At the same time, we need to reassure all our NATO partners that article 5 is not something we just put on paper. Solidarity in NATO is a fact and will remain so, and it will be honoured by all nations, including the Netherlands, if necessary. This is not to say that it will be, but since we don’t know where these tactical moves will lead, we need to prepare for more serious consequences without losing hope for a better outcome. At a time when defence spending has been cut and diplomacy is sometimes reduced to economic diplomacy, this is a particular challenge. We all have the responsibility to reinvent diplomacy in this day and age with all the new instruments we have, digital or not, since the old rules to the game of diplomacy have become very relevant again.

As developments unfold today, I am extremely worried about the latest news from Ukraine. I cannot avoid the conclusion that the onus is on President Putin. The Geneva Agreement has been followed up by Ukraine but not by Russia, in any sense. They have not taken steps to de-escalate the situation; they have not withdrawn their troops from the border; they have not used their influence on these separatists or militants – whatever you want to call them – who are active in the east of Ukraine. We have to be very clear about this to Russia.

Secondly, I want to set the record straight because there’s been so much propaganda, and such an incredible amount lies about what has happened.

It is my firm belief that then President Yanukovych assumed the European Union would say ‘no’ to an association agreement with Ukraine, because he was not going to release Yulia Timoshenko. When he saw in the run-up to the Vilnius Summit that perhaps the EU was prepared to sign an association agreement even without Timoshenko’s release, he panicked. At that point, the strategy of going back to the Ukrainian people and saying, ‘You see, you wanted to be partners with Europe: they don’t want us’, and then laying the blame on the EU, was no longer an option. So he had to change direction, but he could not explain it to the Ukrainian people. This is why things escalated in Ukrainian society – a complete misinterpretation by Moscow and Yanukovych of the reaction of the Ukrainian people to this change of course by Yanukovych. The European Union at that time was not set on a course to offer Ukraine EU membership, as the extreme right now says in Europe.

The whole idea behind the Eastern Partnership, because that is what we are talking about, is to be able to offer a form of cooperation that does not necessarily have to lead to EU membership. It might, at some stage, but is not an accession process per se. It is rather a relationship based on mutual interest, centred on the issue of trade. And the idea, put forward by the Russians, that the European Union was not prepared to consider Russian interests, is false. We invited the Russians time and time again to come and talk about what this meant for trade between Ukraine and Russia, and we said that we didn’t want this to cause a rift in trade between Ukraine, the EU and Russia, and we needed to talk about how we could put Ukraine in a position to be a good trading partner of both the European Union and Russia. The onus here again is on Russia and not on the EU.

Incidentally, the whole idea of seeing the European Union as a threat is very new in Russian politics. In all the years I worked on these issues, NATO expansion was always seen as a direct threat to Russian interests – but the European Union? Not so much. Russians reasoned that you could play one EU country against another and make sure they would not become a threat. But as you’ve seen, especially after his return to the presidency, President Putin started to see the EU as a geostrategic animal as well, and not just a weak economic partnership. So now we have the Eurasian Union too. The whole idea of the Eurasian Union is to copy the European Union, including its institutions. But I’ll tell you why this will fail, and I’ll end on that: the fundamental principle of the EU is that even the most powerful member state will accept the rule of law, even if this goes counter to its immediate interests. Germany accepts being outvoted by other countries, if the vote is held in accordance with treaty rules. I think this is one of the greatest gifts of countries like Germany to all of us in Europe. It’s a great gift of a great nation, of a strong nation, to say, ‘I’m stronger than you are but I will accept for the greater good to be outvoted by you’.

Now we’ll ask you one simple question. Could you ever envisage Russia saying to the partners in the Eurasian Union: ‘I’m stronger than you but I will accept being outvoted by you because that’s how the rules work?’ I’ll leave the question, you might want to answer it.

Thank you very much.